Our Hearts Are Restless

[caption id="attachment_1910" align="aligncenter" width="645"] Yesterday I had a meeting with my thesis adviser for next semester. Not sure I'm ready for this...but at any rate, I pulled out a bunch of books from the library to begin researching over Christmas break. My topic is the bildungsroman (coming of age story) in American children's literature, as seen in Newbery Medal winners. Wish me luck![/caption]    

So I thought about celebrating Thanksgiving by reading "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" - because the holiday is all about the Puritan pilgrims, right?  So what better way to remember their legacy?  Okay, fine, I've decided I should celebrate like a good Catholic. Ergo,  Deo gratias!   Thanks be to God!  Thanksgiving doesn't make much sense in this secularized culture; we have to realize Who we are saying thanks to.   Deo gratias , then, for all of the gifts and talents that we have been blessed with. This semester has hammered home to me the many things for which I need to be grateful.  I've been blessed with a slap of reality in so many ways! Deo gratias for my faith, and the hope that it gives me. Deo gratias  for my deeply supportive friends, and for the graces to accept their help in my weakness. Deo gratias  for my family, always around for a text or a call when I need a few words of honest wisdom. Deo gratias for a few true gentlemen who have proven...

Greetings all!  I thought you might like to know that I've started working with the website CatholicMom.com as an intern!  Visit their site, and specifically their "meet the intern" post, here .  God bless - I'm extremely busy so say a prayer for my sanity!

I woke up in the middle of the night with this Scripture quote floating around in my head. One thing I ask of Thee, O Lord; this I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life. I assume this is God calling me to do a little exegesis and meditation.  Therefore, here I sit with my hot cider-and-honey concoction, leafing through the concordance and my little Bible.  I realized as soon as I looked at the rest of the psalm, why exactly that verse had come to my soul.  The entire psalm is all about trust in God, something I tend to struggle with as a choleric who likes to be in control!  It's especially a challenge at the moment, as I'm in the middle of an emotionally traumatic semester and a monster of a school-and-employment work load.  Nothing I can't handle...IF I keep the right priorities in place, and right now that top priority is leaning on God for the strength I know he'll give me. 1) The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom should I fea...

I feel the need to post this poem.  Probably should have been consistently re-reading it these past few weeks, but I did finally rediscover it.  Kipling basically describes where I am right now - at least the way I'm attempting to face life! If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you; If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too: If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies, Or being hated don't give way to hating, And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise; If you can dream – and not make dreams your master; If you can think –and not make thoughts your aim, If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same: If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools;...

Dear long-suffering readers, Please forgive my silence for a few more days.  It's been a rough and very busy semester, but I do plan to post over Fall Break next week.  In the meantime, here are a few links for your amusement! One of my dear friends from freshman year just received her clothing as a Poor Clare!  See pictures of Sister Veronica Mary of the Sacred Wounds of Christ here . When I was in Rome, I met the Servant Sisters of the Home of the Mother.  One of their charisms is media work, so you can see 8 minutes of yours truly talking about her faith here .  More about the Sisters and their work here . Homecoming was this past weekend - official pictures here , although I don't know if I'm in any of them! More soon!  Pray for me and my last two tests! Love, Rebecca

Dear People, Meet Miss Kathryn Marie, born August 27. This adorable child is 7.5 pounds chubby and 19 inches long, making for a perfect package of cuteness. ~ Aunt Rebecca    

Dear readers, I beg your prayers today for a very special intention.  Late this afternoon, my sister Sarah should be going into induced labor.  Please help me pray for a safe and smooth labor, and a strong, healthy baby.  We ask the intercession of St. Gerard Majella, Blessed Gianna Molla, and Our Lady of Lourdes. I'll update as possible tonight and tomorrow. ~A very nervous Auntie Rebecca

          Erin McCole Cupp blessed me by giving me a copy of her new book, Don't You Forget About Me , from Full Quiver.  I love the power of the written word, and it's a joy to find a new gem of literary quality.  I have to admit, I approach modern (post-Inkling) novels with trepidation.  I've been burned too many times.  Erin's book, however, did more than provide a pleasant antidote to the crap on my local public library's shelves.  It riveted me, forced me to stay up into the wee hours and wake up earlier than normal to finish it. Trust me, I am a college student and do not take the importance of sleep lightly! As a brief synopsis,  Don't You Forget About Me  is a mystery centered around a Catholic grade school and the class of 87's strange "curse".  Mary Catherine Whelihan, a children's writer with endometriosis, must return to her hometown and face the present conflict, and her past sufferings.   DYFAM  includes murder and martyrdom, bir...

Greetings and salutations! I spent the last week in my alternate personality, Chief Minion of the Catholic Writers Conference.  Several other lovely people have posted about the conference, with pictures.  Read the blogs of Ellen , Erin , and Iris , as well as the Guild blog  which has pictures including me. My conference adventures began when Ann Lewis picked me up on Monday to begin the trek towards Chicago.  We picked up the second minion, Amy, and arrived in Schaumburg, Illinois, mid-afternoon.  I enjoyed my first experience of deep-dish pizza, Chicago-style!  It's like upside down pizza with about an inch of cheese...very different, but good.  We checked into the gorgeous Renaissance hotel and conference center, and prepared for Tuesday's set up day.  Oh yeah - the hotel had a tv screen in the bathroom.  Yes, the bathroom.   1984 , anybody?! My duties as Minion involved fetching and carrying, setting up the trade show booth and registration desk, preparing nametags, unpack...

This old myth has been around for years: the Catholic Church hates women.  Don't mention the myriad orders of sisters and nuns, the four female Doctors of the Church, the epically heroic women and girl martyrs, the spectacular women saints who affected the Church and history (think St. Catherine of Siena) and certainly not the deep respect given to holy women in the Bible, especially in St. Paul's letters.  Most of us Catholics are pretty sure that women in the history of Catholicism were not just incidental.  Oh, and did I forget to mention Mary, the Blessed Mother, and the hundreds of titles given to her, the deep love for her evidenced in the life of every single holy person, and the dozens of countries dedicated to her?  Get with the times - the Church loves, respects, and cares for women, because Christ Himself loved, respected, and cared for the women around him, from His Mother to the woman who touched the hem of His robe to the women who stopped him during the carrying ...

While recuperating from a late closing shift, I was thinking about work and the spiritual life.  A couple of thoughts from the past few days finally coalesced into a funny little meditation that I decided to share. :)  This is what happens when a Catholic works food service... -My restaurant is pretty much obsessed with bread.  If you think about it, bread is in the center of every culture, from Egypt to Mexico, in some form or another.  It's the bottom and top of every sandwich, and at the side of every good meal.  It's simple, yet essential.  Christ is the Bread of Life - He Himself made His own Body into bread, that almost elemental substance.  Indeed, He gave us the best Bread ever: His Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity in the Holy Eucharist.  Do we make Him the center of our culture - at least the culture of our families, our friendships?  Is He the top and bottom of our lives, what we build on and where we find our culmination?  Is He by our side every day, every conversatio...

I ran across this quote from Lamentations 2 in the course of my spiritual reading this week.  I was struck especially by the last sentence, reflecting on the murder of one priest and the beating of another in Arizona last week.  When I read the verses again, it came to me also as a call for prayer in our times, for the spiritual starvation of the world and the cruelty of abortion. Arise, give praise in the night, in the beginning of the watches: pour out thy heart like water, before the face of the Lord: lift up thy hands to Him for the life of thy little children, that have fainted for hunger in the streets.  Behold, O Lord, and consider what Thou has thus dealt with: shall women then eat their own fruit, their children of a span long?  Shall the priest and the prophet be slain in the sanctuary of the Lord?

I've had difficulty putting any blog posts together, after I left Europe and returned to face...normality.  That state of existence is actually fairly tolerable, but not always the best fuel for keeping a functional blog.  My apologies to you delightful people who clearly still check this page despite my long silence! At the moment, my summer is full of work and...more work!  With a few fun things in between.  My job at a local bakery-cafe is keeping me busy, as well as newly appreciative of the people who work behind the scenes at restaurants. This summer, I'm beginning work on my senior thesis for Christendom!  Facing senior year is a scary and exciting challenge, but I will admit I'm looking forward to this thesis.  My topic, broadly, is children's literature.  I spent most of my childhood in the world of books, and I credit my mother for having shaped my love of the written word.  All those summer reading lists, the trips to the library, the huge amount of books she...

[caption id="attachment_1763" align="alignnone" width="645"] On our first two nights in Ireland, we stayed in the little down of Dun Laoghaire, just south of Dublin. We were out of the city, but just a short train ride away. This picture was taken on our first night, after we went to Saturday evening Mass, enjoyed a great pub dinner of fish and chips, and walked along the sea shore for a bit. It was rather grey, wet, and blustery, but we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.[/caption] [caption id="attachment_1767" align="alignnone" width="645"] At Dublin Castle, we saw just the chapel and the bathrooms. It's quite stunning architecture, but I couldn't help dwelling on all the Catholics persecuted by imprisonment and tortures in this castle, including St. Oliver Plunkett and others.[/caption] [caption id="attachment_1769" align="alignnone" width="645"] The tower is that in which Red Hugh O'D...